This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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Charity Is ‘Rock’ for Immigrants
In the five years leading up to the deal freeing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli nation adopted his family as its own, sharing its pain and campaigning for its cause. Meanwhile, the family of Pavel Slotzker was all but forgotten. Shalit’s comrade, Slotzker was a victim of the same cross-border raid in which militants abducted Shalit,…
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Helping Stunned Victims of Tsunami
When a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Eastern Japan earlier this year, the staff at Fuji Youchien kindergarten in the small town of Yamamoto followed well-rehearsed regulations. They quickly took all the children outside to the parking lot. After a few minutes, with the ground still shaking and rain pouring down,…
The Latest
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Sepia-Tinged Take on Jascha Heifetz
In the new documentary “God’s Fiddler,” on the life of Jascha Heifetz, director Peter Rosen succeeds in creating the first film biography of the violin virtuoso. The film succeeds as a sort of classical parallel to the VH1 series “Behind the Music,” using Heifetz’s own home films and interviews with artistic colleagues to flesh out…
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Are Mitzvah Days An Excuse To Stay Away?
As I raced through scales to warm up my piccolo, an old man with an oxygen tube in his nose smiled at me. “I love the piccolo,” he said. The man, a retired congregational rabbi, sat front row center in the social hall of an assisted living home, as a handful of members from my…
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Lech Lecha — Get Thee Out
Genesis 12:1–17:27 Abraham, Defender of the Fledgling Faith The culture of the Christian West, the culture of the Muslim world and the culture of the Jewish community are, in the final analysis, the cultures of Abraham. Some call them revealed religions — religions with a central hub that turns on an axis of divine revelation,…
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Books University of the Ghetto
Gloria Spielman‘s most recent book, “Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime,” is now available. “Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime” won a silver medal in the 2011 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. Spielman‘s posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite, courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more…
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‘After Weegee’ Defends Photojournalism
After Weegee: Essays on Contemporary Jewish American Photographers By Daniel Morris Syracuse University Press, 320 pages, $29.95 More than a decade ago, William Klein claimed that there are two kinds of photographers: “Jewish and goyish.” He said that if you look at modern photography, you find, “on the one hand, the Weegees, the Diane Arbuses,…
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Is This Any Way to Name a Train Station?
Forward reader Eldad Ganin has sent me an excerpt from an English-language publication in the Ukrainian city of Lviv (better known by its Polish, Yiddish and Russian name of Lvov), along with a query. The excerpt reads: Why Central Trains Stations in Ukraine Are Called ‘Vokzal’ It is believed that the word vokzal originated from…
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Books Murray Silverstein’s Metaphysical Chickens
Photo courtesy of Murray Silverstein One of my greatest poetic discoveries this year has been the work of Murray Silverstein, which I first encountered in the recently published book “Chapter & Verse: Poems of Jewish Identity.” Silverstein’s daytime gig is in architecture; he has written and co-written a number of books on the subject, including…
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Today’s Noah
What if Noah had been an exemplary spiritual leader and not just, as the Torah tells us, a righteous person by the standards of his own generation? Picture Noah as a true prophet of his time, a man who knows that God is about to destroy the world. Such a person would have done far…
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Books Their (Our) Time Has Come
On Tuesday, Trina Robbins wrote about a Jewish woman who drew comics. Her posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite, courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: Last month I flew to Seattle to attend the first GeekGirlCon…
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Culture As Mel Brooks turns 99, his wisdom matters more than ever
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